Pebbles & On The Rocks Eleuthera

Pebbles and On The Rocks have bug infestation issues that will not be resolved during your stay.

The unofficial motto for Eleuthera is "Not For Everyone" and that is certainly true. One thing you need to know about the island is that there are bugs. Mosquitoes, noseeums, and various other biting insects can be found there.
Bugs aren't an issue as long as you know how to deal with them.

The best way to prevent bugs from interferring with your vacation is to keep the screen doors closed in the daytime and keep both the screen doors and any other doors closed in the morning and evening.

Armed with this knowledge and after many successful bug free stays at other cottages on the island, we arrived at Pebbles not concerned about bugs. After arriving, we noticed an unusual amount of bugs in the unit in the daytime. We applied bug spray and started looking into the problem.

To our horror we discovered numerous structural problems around the cottage that caused bugs to enter at any time of the day or night.

First of all, the screens in the windows and doors were in horrible shape.

Secondly, there was a gaping hole between the side door jam and the door. Daylight could be seen right through it.

Lastly there was a big square hole right at the bottom of the main sliding screen door in the living (no picture). At this point we knew that we had problems that went beyond general cleanliness.

Next we noticed that there was a lot of ants in the unit. There were ants in the kitchen, and there were ant traps all over place, apparently to try and contain the problem. Ants make it more difficult because you need to make sure you don't leave any food exposed. We never had an ant problem at any of the other cottages we rented on Eleuthera.

It was at this point that we started to feel with the effect of the bugs. We were getting bitten pretty badly (I've never had a bug bite in my trips to Eleuthera - so this was definitely a first for me). The spray-on bug spray wasn't enough of a deterrent to whatever was in the place, and we resorted to some rub-on cream (29% Deet) that did help a little.

It was also at this point that we started to notice something else. While standing on some of the rugs (particularily the one in the bedroom by the bed), you could feel an onslaught of insects trying to bite and jump all over your lower legs. We don't know what it was; we were just hoping it wasn't a bigger problem such as fleas.

Later in the evening, we started to notice a lot of bugs and bug remnants around the unit.

To top it all off, as we climbed in to bed hoping that we could find a refuge from the waves of attacking bugs, we found that there were bug issues in the bed. We were being bitten in bed and could feel things on our skin! This is *after* heavily applying and reapplying numerous types of bug repellant. We had serious discussions about sleeping in the car. In the end, we stayed up as late as we could, and then removed all the sheets except for one and tried to tough out the night. It was a horrible night.

We concluded that the place would need to be bug-bombed daily (note: bug bombs were provided by the owner, implying to us that this was a known and ongoing issue). The problem with bug bombs is that after the insecticide is put into the air for a few hours, the cottage needs to be aired out for a few more hours to get rid of the poison. The problem we faced was that the screens were in such poor shape that we would be letting bugs right back in after the place was cleared out.

It was obvious we would face a bug battle throughout the duration of our stay and it could only be fixed with the replacement of the screen doors and addressing the structural issues around the doorways. The position that the owners put us in was forcing us to decide how much poison we could tolerate in the air versus how much bugs would be after us.

We can assure you that this is an atypical environment for your stay in Eleuthera. The owner likes to point out that bugs and ants are part of island living. One of the two of us grew up in the islands, and this is certainly not the case. There are plenty of very attractive, more secluded rentals on the island that do not have any of these problems.

After encountering these problems, we Googled the place and found complaints about these same problems dating as far back as 2006. This told us that these issues were not going to be resolved by the owners as they have been ignored for a very long time.

Thanks for all the great feedback!

Have a story about Pebbles or On the Rocks that you would like to share? Email Us Here